The United Front Work Department aims to befriend, bribe and seduce ‘useful idiots’. Was Andrew caught up in its net?
The late Chairman Mao, China’s former supreme leader, once called the United Front Work Department one of the three “magic weapons” of the Chinese Communist party . That the other two were the People’s Liberation Army and the party’s propaganda arm signals how central the UFWD has been to the CCP’s efforts for nearly a century. TheThe UFWD’s job began as neutralising potentially hostile actors at home.
The United Front’s prizes may be unaware of having been targeted: they are what Vladimir Lenin is believed to have called “useful idiots”. But even the boldest UFWD operative could hardly have dreamed of such a prominent and needy member of British high society as Andrew. In 2014, Andrew leveraged his family position to set up a new venture, Pitch@Palace, through which young entrepreneurs were invited to a royal residence to pitch ideas to potential investors. That same year, he launched Pitch@Palace China.
No doubt it seemed like a good opportunity: at the time, there was talk of a “golden era” in the UK’s relations with China. Why should the prince not also ride a mutually profitable wave of ever-warmer relations? The proposition was well received at the highest levels in China. The then Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, attended the global final at Spencer House in 2019 and spoke fondly about the UK’s tech startups, a sector China was keenly interested in.
Back in China, as Pitch@Palace was getting going, the leader, Xi Jinping, had turned his attention to the UFWD, consolidating its power and boosting its budget. In 2015, Xi appeared at UFWD’s national conference – a clear endorsement of its authority – and later gave it control of other strands of CCP work.
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